Aliens have always been the icing on the science fiction cake.

When I was sixteen, I started imagining extraterrestrial worlds, partly to understand our own world better. I called my first alien race "The Kret". The world building went deep into details at that time and micro stories spun of already during their creation. Watch out for the next weeks and editions for some of them.

The Kret have a lot of similarities with humans. Reasonable explanations will be provided for that aspect. I'm already stuck in the middle a short story about its circumstances. However, their society and existence differ drastically from ours. The reason for it is that I wanted to find out more about our own society by creating a slightly different model of life. But let's go through the bare facts first.

The alien population lives on an earth-like planet called Kret. Kret is orbiting the star Rana or Delta Eridani within its habitable zone. Rana is about 30 Ly away from earth. My choice for that system took me weeks at that time (1990s). It involved going through hundreds of stars nearby and even making an attempt t draw them int a 3D model. On paper. It was pre-internet and especially before the discovery of exoplanets. Today, we have proof of thousands of planets in almost every star system, but unfortunately not in that one. It probably was a badly educated guess at that time.

However, as many fact are based on the location and distance of that star system and because I still like the name Rana, I will stick to it. Probably in some years, an advanced satellite finds a hint of exoplanets in that system, too.

The Planet

But back to the story. The planet Kret is slightly smaller than Earth. Also, its gravity is lower. That's why the average Kret is a bit taller than humans - around 1,90 for female and 1,95 for male Kret.

The surface of the planet consists of 75% ocean. The remaining 25% form a single, contiguous continent. The Kret almost entirely live along the west coast in front of a large, long mountain chain, that spans the coast from north west to south east. There are only a handful of settlements on the other side of the continent.

The mountain range is the source of many big rivers, that flow into the sea after going through five vast deltas. Most of the 200 million inhabitants live in that region forming communities from smaller settlements up to larger city-esque areas.

All river systems are connected through artificial channels with each other and form a widespread system of river bound transport ways that made the Kret society prosper.

The Kret Themselves

As mentioned, the Kret are astonishingly (or let's say suspiciously) similar to us humans. They could even walk through Stockholm or Hamburg without being noticed. This is a fact that no expert in Xenology would have predicted before. As said they are a bit taller, which can be explained and their look resembles a mixture of various terrestrial regions, black, white asian and a touch of native american, some leaning more or less to one or the other.

After the first contact, scientists were able to dive deeper into that phenomenon and found similar DNA, but encountered a deviation in the genetic lines that suspiciously date back to about 100,000 years. All differences can be explained by the different environments and a small original genetic pool.

On the planet, they found terrestrial genetic profiles based on DNA in plants and animals, but they also came across a second line of plant-like structures with very unique, non-DNA based biology.

The social environment of the Kret shows one characteristic difference from us. They live in clans called "Arras". Arras are their only social grouping. They don't have countries or borders, they don't have the concept of cities as we know them.

These clans are comparable to large families of 30 to 70 members. The Kret in an Arra are not necessarily all related, yet they are tightly connected. Children are raised and educated together in such a community, old people are taken care of.

All members of one Arra live in the same huge building or rather structure, which they also call "Arra". The Kret very often use the same name for similar or related concepts. Such a house usually has a large debating and leisure hall called "Sune" as well as a similarly huge dining room called "Hol".

The families are equally led and represented by one matriarch and one patriarch.

Single persons don't have comparable importance, weight or rights as in our world. Neither have regions, companies or other social structures. The leading social concept is the Arra.

The Kret Society

So the Kret are physically very similar to us and that they genetically have a 100.000-year-old history. But they have missed some of the tipping points of social development, that had led to this explosive exponential growth of the humans on Earth.

Studies from sociologists point out that their way of social interactions and the lack of larger entities like cities or countries could be an explanation. Large scale rivalry could therefore be a motor for such massive infrastructural efforts and exponential development as seen on Earth.

All other aspects of their life point to a culturally rich history that dates back to civilizations at least twice as old as the first relatively barbaric human ones. Remarkably there are also no signs of large-scale disruptions like wars or pandemics, which could also be explained by the small-scale social structures.

Their craftsmanship and their understanding of arts for example are way ahead of ours. Their knowledge and capabilities in the field of mechanics and their insights into mathematics are extraordinary.

There is a strong hierarchy of social levels between the arras, the Kret families. But the system is not static like castes. Families can rise and fall in their reputation.

Additionally, the system getting more formal at the top, because there has to be a committee that loosely organizes and monitors global streams and development.

On Kret, there are nine high families, the so-called "Arram Sul", who discuss and tackle these global issues. Each of the nine again has nine allied second-row families called "Arram Mas".

Each Arram Sul appoints four ambassadors, the "Kala". Together with the matriarchs and the patriarchs of the high families, they form a council of 54 representatives called "Kalam Mas". This council could be seen as the world government. It has an appointed moderator but there is no single leader.

The society of the Kret doesn't have a legislative power. As for all other parts of their life, everyday rules are made within the sovereign family clans, the Arras.

Instead, they have a code of conduct, a rulebook that in its current form is over 5000 years old. It is called "Kanota Parchala" and contains 1296 hard rules by which every Kret citizen including the high members of the Karam Mas has to live.

The rules are continuously enforced by judges and therefore permanently turned into practical and modern interpretations.

There is also a second book, the "Kanota Posa", that describes the structure of the Kret society and terms like property, ownership, heritage, consent and decision making as well as the family structures.

As described several times already, the life of all Kret is taking place inside their Arras, their families. However, the jurisdiction and its representatives, the judges completely live outside these structures. In the Kret language, they are called the "Kane" (Kah-nay singular Kano).

Kane enjoy a high reputation within all ranks and hierarchies of the Kret society. They are completely neutral and don't interfere in any way with the daily business of Arras. They monitor each other with a complex system of overlapping responsibilities and territories, checks and balances. So corruption exists but its countermeasures are strong and built into the core.

Next to the judges themselves, there is a full administrative infrastructure that takes care of their supply of daily goods, organizational tasks and even entertainment. The caste of the Kane is a world on its own.

Once a month there is a conference where the high council Kalam Mas and the supreme judges (Kane Kane) come together for a mutual exchange.

Observers

The way how the Kret were discovered is a story on its own. I'm already in teh middle of writing, so please be patient. Many aspects of the Kret life will be uncovered in anecdotes.

But let me anyway end with some remarks about us. The human expedition that would set sail to explore the Kret was planned as a lifetime commitment. Observing and studying a new species was the ultimate adventure that you could embark on in Earth's 23rd century.

But it would not be a job in isolation and deprivations like many other scientific expeditions in the past. The team was huge. About 200 people were on the scientific space station that circled planet Kret. There were all kinds of disciplines involved. From microbiologists to theologists.

Besides the station in Kret's orbit, there also was a cloaked outpost on the planet that mainly hosted relay technology for small undiscoverable robots. They called them "The Bugs". They were only around 1 cm large but equipped with cameras, microphones, other sensors and an intelligence that could take autonomous decisions.

First goal: Don't get caught! Second goal: Record and filter as much relevant information as possible.

The team on the space station had a lot of material to explore and received stunning results and mindbending facts about that new species, but what they learned about themselves and about us, the humans as a whole was even more stunning.